Research and Publications
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State-of-the-art mountaintop cameras from the University of Nevada, Reno, a new and expanding tool for fire mangers who oversee the wildland and wildland/urban interface, spotted or tracked 240 fires in Nevada and California in 2017, helping to keep firefighters more situationally aware and able to mount appropriate responses more rapidly over tens of thousands of square miles of forests and rangelands, including rural communities.
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The interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, recently directed the agencies in his department to work with states and private landowners to minimize development and disturbance in migration corridors and winter ranges used by elk, mule deer and pronghorn antelope.
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The Western Governors’ Association (WGA) has addressed this need by surveying invasive species coordinators in WGA member states and territories Top 50 Invasive Species in the West to develop the “Top 50 Invasive Species in the West.” The compilation of terrestrial and aquatic invasive species includes highly-publicized examples such as cheatgrass, Quagga Mussels, tamarisk and the Emerald Ash Borer. The list also encompasses less well known, but still impactful, examples such as leafy spurge, Red shiner, Russian knapweed, and Golden algae.
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Evidence from this analysis shows significant increases in nutrient flux (different forms of nitrogen and phosphorus), major-ion flux and metal concentrations are the most common changes in stream water quality within the first 5 years after fire. Dissolved constituents of ions and metals tended to decrease in concentration 5 years after fire whereas particulate matter concentration continued to increase. Assembling this unique and extensive dataset provided the opportunity to determine the most common post-fire water-quality changes in the large and diverse Western USA. Results from this study could inform studies in other parts of the world, will help parameterise and validate post-fire water-quality models, and assist communities affected by wildfire to anticipate changes to their water quality.
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Though widely distributed throughout the study region, ventenata only appeared in 45% of the 225 plots, and foliar cover was typically less than 50%. It was primarily found in ephemerally wet microhabitats. Species richness and the Shannon diversity index were lowest in plots with high V. dubia cover. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling analysis revealed that ventenata and medusahead were closely associated. Furthermore, chi-square indicator analysis showed that T. caput-medusae was more prevalent, while mountain big sagebrush was less prevalent, in plots containing ventenata. Abiotic factors that explained variation in ventenata abundance included rock cover, soil depth, and a north/south aspect. Higher ventenata cover also correlated with higher clay content and lower phosphorus and potassium concentrations in the soil. We suggest that at this point, detection survey efforts to locate incipient infestations of ventenata in sagebrush steppe communities should focus on moist areas and sites susceptible to invasion by medusahead.
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This year marks the centennial of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the most powerful and important bird-protection law ever passed. In honor of this milestone, nature lovers around the world are joining forces to celebrate the Year of the Bird and committing to protect birds for the next hundred years. As part of this yearlong celebration, March is dedicated to highlighting native plants and their importance to birds and other wildlife. With that in mind, we want to take this opportunity to feature Artemisia tridentata, or the sagebrush plant family.
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USGS scientists Lea Condon and David Pyke tested the idea that biotic communities mediate the effects of disturbances such as fire and grazing on site resistance by using structural equation modeling to test relationships between disturbance events, the biotic community, and resistance to cheatgrass invasion. Increased site resistance following fire was associated with higher bunchgrass cover and recovery of bunchgrasses and mosses with time since fire. Fire reduced near-term site resistance to cheatgrass on actively grazed rangelands, and evidence of grazing was more pronounced on burned sites and was positively correlated with cheatgrass cover. Independent of fire, grazing impacts resulted in reduced site resistance to cheatgrass, suggesting that grazing management that enhances plant and biocrust communities will also enhance site resistance.
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Oregon State University’s Citizen Fire Academy (CFA) program equips participants with the knowledge they need to improve fire preparedness and resiliency on their own properties and in their communities. This curriculum offers interested educators or agencies the teaching tools needed to conduct their own CFA program, including lesson plans, detailed agendas, tour ideas, and suggestions for presenting it as a hybrid course. The content is divided into six modules, with options to combine and separate the modules to fit the needs of the CFA facilitator.
Readers can download the entire 154-page curriculum as a single PDF or they can access individual sections. The single-PDF version of the publication includes hyperlinks to all references and resources, and includes an interactive Table of Contents for easy navigation to specific sections. In addition, corresponding PowerPoint presentations, worksheets, and handouts can be downloaded individually.
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This study seeks to examine the relationships between a set of NFDRS fire danger indices (Fire Danger Ratings, Staffing Level and the Ignition Component) and measures of fire activity (fire occurrence and final fire size) across the entire conterminous US over an 8-year period. We reveal that different regions of the US display different levels of correspondence between each of the fire danger indices and recorded fire activity. Areas in the Southern and Eastern Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACCs) exhibit weaker correlations than those in the Northwest, Northern Rockies, Great Basin and Northern California GACCs. Peaks in fire occurrence are shown to occur at mid–low values of fire danger whereas final fire sizes increase monotonically with each fire danger index. Our findings appear to align with perceived shifts in management practices currently employed across the US and indicate that the ability of the NFDRS to apportion the resources required to combat large fires is in general well developed.
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The importance of cost effective fuel treatment programs has appeared consistently in federal directives (FLAME ACT, National Cohesive Strategy, U.S Department of Interior Office of Policy Analysis) as a priority. Implementing cost effective fuel treatment programs requires a spatially explicit and integrated systematic approach that can be applied to the landscape, program and national scale. The objectives of this study were three-fold. The first objective was to generate cost effective fuel treatment programs at the landscape scale and their impact on the preparedness program. The second objective was to quantify the interrelationship between the fuel program and preparedness program by budget alternative at a landscape scale to provide mangers with the fuel and preparedness budgets that achieve the highest return on investment for any combination of budgets. The third objective was to form cost effective national and regional fuel treatment programs based on the data collected from the landscape analysis that considers national and regional policies.